18 January 1986
Ever wondered how things turned out between cartoon-come-to-life Morten and the girl in the video of A-ha’s charming, poppy ‘Take On Me’? Well, the opening of their follow-up video, ‘The Sun Always Shines On TV’, gives you the answer; he turns back into a cartoon—his true nature, you understand—and runs off into the night, leaving her desolated and alone.
Huh? Well, that’s just real life, y’know! As for all that stuff in the video, the romance and drama and what have you, well, the sun always shines on TV! Yes, this song really is as unlikeable as that.
Hammering home the point with the same cold bombast as the souped-up synth-rock track itself, this new video has Morten and the other two, plus a drummer, playing in a church to an audience of literal dummies. A-ha, you see, are serious, despite having an exclamation for a name just like Wham! but with a hyphen instead because that’s arty. See that dummy? That’s you.
‘The Sun Always Shines On TV’ may have got to number one in the UK and Ireland where ‘Take On Me’ had stalled at number two, but there’s no doubt which song is better loved, or actually remembered at all. A-ha do come back the following year with John Barry to make one of the best James Bond title songs ever, but even at this point I was aware that the sun of public affection was beginning to set on them.
